Archives for November 2010

I’ve been browsing through the Gawker posts backlogged in my Google reader this morning and got caught up in this one musing on soundtrack music in recent wordless (or mostly) movie trailers. I wasn’t so taken with their Battle: Los Angeles pick, but the Radiohead choral cover in The Social Network has indeed stuck in my brain. Thinking back through my own recent trailer viewing, John Adams’ work in the teaser for I Am Love also hits insanely hard for all of the obvious reasons, particularly to the ears of someone with my kind of musical preferences.

Still, the soundtrack that has really been on uncontrollable repeat for me these past few weeks was introduced by this commercial for an HP printer (which I suppose, in ad terms, means it really worked). A little Googling to ID the artist turned up this fabulous video for the same song filmed for a class project in the ’70s.

Just imagine if these kids had had iMovie.

The music trick gets a workout every time a foreign film is marketed in America, but even when the trailer makes full use of the dialog, I love listening for what the filmmakers try to get across in the music bed. With only a couple of minutes to capture a story line, you need to use shorthand, and aural cues are often the most powerful–if not the most subtle–hook. (See a catalog of movie trailer music cliches, among others, as captured here).

UPDATE: Since the original performance video has been removed from YouTube, here is an alternate performance. Same great artists, different source material. I know this has been a popular song here on Mind the Gap, so pass the word.

[via]

Here in post-election, post-Juan Williams-dismissal America, music blogger Matthew Guerrieri has perhaps best characterized the scene before us:

This is the third election cycle in a row driven by one emotion–throw the bums out–which rather implies to me an electorate driving around, hopelessly lost, but too stubborn to stop and ask for directions.

In a world where political rallies double as performance art, public funding for the arts is once again a hot topic of discussion. At Sticks and Drones, conductor Bill Eddins plays provocator with a post suggesting “a revolutionary idea: kill the NEA.” He kicks up some interesting ideas about the potential impact of removing the public arts funding whipping post from the political playing field, and has inspired some equally interesting reactions from readers.

Elsewhere, government plans to cut arts funding generated a cry of protest of a decidedly different bent.

[via the headmistress over at Notes from the Kelp]

Suffering from post election withdrawal and the cute baby animal posts not alleviating
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I’ve had two particularly inspiring conversations with composers recently, and both included significant discussions of how each had found their way to creative freedom in their work.

Lei Liang spoke passionately about discovering a fuller image of his own cultural identity only after his arrival in the States, and how the dueling influences of his Asian and Western musical leanings actually serve to free him from the trappings of both. You can read more about that here on NewMusicBox or hear how it plays out in his music in the video.

Christopher Theofanidis talked about letting go of his concern for solid ground in his creative process, opening up his musical language, and how he almost gave up his music study to go to business school. (Read the full interview here on NewMusicBox.) His thoughts on the use of storyline in his work have stayed with me:

“I think it comes actually from a general humanistic way of thinking: the transformation of emotions; how you care about something. If it’s a melody or person or whatever it happens to be, it happens over time in a way that makes you care about them more, or hopefully deepens your understanding of them. And that’s where the storytelling thing comes into play for me. It’s something to hang the flow of time on that makes sense. It creates meaning and depth for me.”